EEDA - East of England Development Agency

EPIC post production makes a hit

7 July 2009

Faultless execution of a tight-timescale post-production project for network television has won new friends for EPIC, Norwich’s hi-tech broadcast production centre.

Six episodes of “Rob Lilwall - Cycling Home from Siberia”, the story of one man’s three-year, two-wheeled odyssey around the world, were edited in as many weeks.

Cambridge Film and Television Productions won the commission from National Geographic.

“The editing schedule was very tight,” says CFTP’s MD, Lester Milbank. “We needed to run three edit suites concurrently, with three different editors each cutting two episodes. They all needed to be able to access some of the same material – so an advanced networked facility was essential. EPIC was able to offer us that, and also the complete delivery package, from editing, to voiceover recording, mastering and legalising.”

“There is a real energy around the building which helped in the creative process,” he adds.

Series Producer Sue Brody is equally enthusiastic: “It was hectic, but I loved every minute of it,” she says. “I was able to work across three adjacent edit suites, keeping an eye on what was going on in each of them – and also viewing rushes to make sure I could keep one step ahead. It was a real pleasure working at EPIC. The technical support we got there was superb – there are not many facilities which could have handled a project like this. It all went very smoothly and despite a tough six week schedule, we all came in on time and on budget.”

EPIC Director Mark Wells explains the process. “The programme was shot on HDV. Months of rushes were digitised onto our large server system,” he says. “We have over sixty terabytes of storage available, so that was no problem. The project was edited in Final Cut Studio – our broadcast suites are fibre-optic networked, so data transmission was no problem either: we can edit uncompressed material, HD or SD, in full resolution in real time.”

EPIC, the East of England Production innovation Centre in Norwich is owned and run by Norfolk County Council and funded by the East of England Development Agency. It is a European Broadband and Media Centre within the EU project, E-Clic.

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